Dave Ewart wrote:

3. Copy in a robust fashion from the mail spools to a temporary location
prior to the backup job, so that these copies of the spools will not
change; then backup the copies rather than the 'live' spools.  The
"robust fashion" would work in a similar way to how locking mail spools
operates when appending/deleting messages.

I use filesystem snapshots.
Taking a snapshot is only matter of seconds.
I make a snapshot a few minutes before the amanda backup starts.
Amanda then makes a backup of that snapshot instead

Your OS has to support is however.
Solaris >2.8 (2.8 plain needs patches) can do it.
Linux with lvm1 can do it too; Linux with lvm2 is  not yet stable
enough for doing snapshots.  (I have lvm2 snapshots working on
one system without problems, but on other systems it makes the
computer crash;  maybe related to amount of memory and/or system load:
the system where it does work has lots of RAM, and is very quiet in
the night.)

Mail me for the scripts to create a snapshot if you're interested.


--
Paul Bijnens, Xplanation                            Tel  +32 16 397.511
Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM    Fax  +32 16 397.512
http://www.xplanation.com/          email:  Paul.Bijnens AT xplanation DOT com
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